


Take Your Heart into Your Hands

by a_case_for_wonder



Series: A Mother's Heart [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Coda, Drabble, Episode Related, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr, episode 102
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:00:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25342858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_case_for_wonder/pseuds/a_case_for_wonder
Summary: "Vilya steals into her quarters, pours water into a rough wooden bowl with trembling hands."A mother checks on her daughter.
Series: A Mother's Heart [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1881511
Comments: 21
Kudos: 252





	Take Your Heart into Your Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I couldn't help myself. Cross-posted from tumblr. enjoy!

Vilya remembers. 

Vilya _remembers._ The few she took with her, lost to the Kraken’s patient, relentless jaws. Her Aramente, ruined. Her tribe, her husband, her _daughter._ It’s been decades, she realizes, and her heart is gripped with a sudden fear that overwhelms everything, overwhelms even the steadfast love she’s come to have for the people of this island, too. Because so much could have happened, in decades. 

She makes it back to camp mostly with her mind in one piece. The Mighty Nein, for all their idiosyncrasies, are clearly a powerful group with powerful forces on their side, and more than that they seem willing to help. They scrap together the loose beginnings of a plan in the depth of the night and on the journey back. For the rest of the day she pretends everything is normal. She answers to “Viridian” and barely flinches. Like one achingly slow breath, the sun reaches its peak and sets again. Vilya steals into her quarters, pours water into a rough wooden bowl with trembling hands. 

Korrin first. Just- just to check. Buried in some notes at his desk, of course. He looks so much older than she thinks he should. He’s not wearing his mantle, though, the one that marks him as leader of their tribe. Which means- which means-

Vilya thinks about her daughter: her freckled face, her reckless, toothy grin. The scry seems to falter, just for a second, and then it catches, and Vilya cannot breathe. 

Keyleth had been a teenager when she’d left. Now, she sits at the roots of a tree Vilya doesn’t know, high near the edges of the cliffs of Vesra. She looks...calm. Not the calm of someone who has never known grief, but the calm of one who has endured it, who has climbed slowly and achingly out the other side. Her hair brushes her bare shoulders, across which Vilya can see a sprawling design of antlers and leaves inked deeply into her sun-freckled skin. She leans quietly against the tree beside her - a Sun Tree, Vilya recognizes, though she’s never seen one in the flesh, a couple decades old - as though it’s an old friend. 

“Vex is pregnant again,” Vilya’s daughter whispers to the open air, her expression wistful and a little amused. “She swears this is the last time. I think I might actually believe her. Six is probably enough, even for them.” A laugh. Vilya’s heart longs. “She still hesitates sometimes, you know. Telling me about that stuff. Like after all this time she’s still worried it'll hurt. But you know what? It didn’t this time. I’m still... I still miss you. But it doesn’t hurt the way it used to. I think you’d be glad.” 

Vilya doesn’t know how to process the grief and wonder pouring into her heart. That her daughter has people she holds so dear, friends who have _six children, gods she’s been gone so long._ Friends she’s clearly loved and lost and loved again. Vilya had told herself she was just going to look, but suddenly she can’t stand it. She drops her scry, puts a hand to the wall of her tree, doesn’t think twice.

\--

“I think you’d be glad,” Keyleth says softly. The raven doesn’t come so often these days, but she still talks to the tree with his feather at its heart, sometimes. She likes to share good news with it. She’s talked to the tree itself, magically, and it tells her it doesn’t mind that it’s not really _it_ that Keyleth is talking to. 

She watches the sun rise over Vesra, golden and bright, the wind sharp and clarifying out here past the wards. She’s thinking about her family. Thinking about old and new pieces coming together, making something that much more beautiful. 

A sound like crackling bark, and the sun tree’s trunk splits open down the middle, a burst of magical light opening on a doorway beyond which the world is dark. Keyleth scrambles back as she watches, wide-eyed, heart in her throat. 

There is a pause the length and weight of decades. One second. Two. 

Then, a leg made of vines. A hand, sun-darkened and weather-worn. A head of wild, unruly, sun-bleached red curls over a face streaked with unnoticed tears. And Keyleth’s mother steps out of her tree.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Find me on Tumblr @a-case-for-wonder. Oh I cannot WAIT to see what kind of repercussions this reveal has in-game. Is it Thursday yet?


End file.
